Bangkok When Gautam Adani talks about the huge potential of his native India, he sounds a bit like a politician on an election campaign. In a recent speech in the financial metropolis of Mumbai, the entrepreneur predicted an end to poverty in the country and an unprecedented rise to become one of the world’s leading economic powers.
“No other country will grow as rapidly as India in the next three decades,” he said. Nowhere else in the world will there be a similarly large middle class as in the emerging country, which already has 1.4 billion inhabitants. Between his sentences, Adani takes long breaks to give the audience enough room for applause. The man with the distinctive dark mustache and the neatly drawn side parting enjoys the role of the subcontinent’s top visionary and economic cheerleader.
The thesis that India is the new land of unlimited opportunities can be underlined by the son of a textile trader with the help of his own biography: After dropping out of university, he managed to become a multi-billionaire. In the past two years alone, his fortune has increased more than tenfold to $112 billion. Shortly before his 60th birthday in June, Adani has now become the richest man in Asia – and is fighting with US investor legend Warren Buffett for fifth place on the global list of the rich.
The head of the energy and infrastructure conglomerate Adani, which is named after him, is not satisfied with that. He’s in the middle of a multi-billion dollar takeover offensive to further expand his influence in Asia’s third-largest economy.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
As it became known over the weekend, he is buying the Indian business of the Swiss building materials group Holcim for more than six billion francs, making it one of the country’s most important cement manufacturers. In the twelve months before, he had already taken over 30 other companies from a wide variety of industries for at least six billion dollars – from a media group to a holiday portal to a brand for premium rice.
Greta Thunberg protested against Adani
Behind this is Adani’s attempt to become increasingly independent of the fossil fuel business, which formed the basis of his wealth in the past. Adani began his entrepreneurial career in his home state of Gujarat in the 1980s after dropping out of economics studies and working for his brother in the plastics industry for a period.
Adani developed the facility into the most important industrial port on the subcontinent.
(Photo: Reuters)
His first major breakthrough came a decade later when the local government allowed him to operate a private port in the town of Mundra on India’s west coast.
Adani developed the facility into the subcontinent’s most important industrial port and used the new heart of India’s infrastructure to make itself indispensable for the economic boom of the emerging country: via the port in Mundra it began to import coal in bulk from abroad and became fast to the market leader.
To secure supplies, he bought a coal mine in Indonesia. He fed his own power plants with the raw material, which became India’s largest private energy supplier in 2014.
Its coal deals put Adani at the center of a global campaign by climate activists protesting the start of construction on an Adani coal mine in Australia three years ago. Siemens was also criticized because the company had promised to supply a signaling system for the project.
Activist Greta Thunberg called on the German company to cancel the deal with Adani in order to “stop, delay or at least disrupt” its mining plans. However, the then Siemens boss Joe Kaeser decided to stick to the contract with the Indian billionaire.
Adani celebrated the victory: They have repeatedly shown not to be intimidated. It is about providing developing countries with affordable energy to help them escape poverty.
The first coal from the Australian mine was shipped a few months ago. Around ten million tons are to be exported per year – despite ongoing protests. However, Adani is probably no longer suitable as the ultimate enemy of climate activists: he is currently carrying out a massive conversion of his company towards renewable energies.
His coal deals put Adani at the center of a global campaign by climate activists.
(Photo: imago images/ZUMA Wire)
According to his own statements, his company Adani Green Energy is already the largest solar company in the world and intends to provide around 45 gigawatts of green electricity by 2030. With that, he would single-handedly cover ten percent of India’s overall target.
Close connection to Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Last year, Adani announced plans to invest $50 billion to $70 billion in the green energy business over the next decade. The high ambitions are well received on the stock exchange: Adani Green Energy’s price has risen by 8000 percent in the past five years. With a market capitalization of $50 billion, the company is now the most valuable in Adani’s corporate empire.
He is particularly interested in the production of green hydrogen – an energy carrier that is considered crucial for making the chemical and steel industries, for example, CO2-neutral. Adani is in line with India’s second super-rich, Mukesh Ambani, who recently held the title of richest Asian himself. The head of the conglomerate Reliance is also planning billions in investments in renewable energies.
The two billionaires also have one thing in common: both come from Gujarat, the state where India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has his roots. Both Adani and Ambani are said to owe their economic success in part to their good connections with the prime minister. Adani was already considered an ally of Modi when he was still chief minister of Gujarat. Before becoming prime minister, Modi used Adani’s private jets to fly to campaign meetings.
In its infrastructure business in particular, Adani relies on political support. In 2018, for example, he benefited from the fact that the government also allowed companies from outside the industry to operate airports. Since then, in a wave of privatizations, he has received one contract after the other and within a few months has risen to become the market leader in India’s airport business.
In the past, Adani has always rejected allegations that he was given preferential treatment by Modi. But he makes no secret of the fact that he is very satisfied with the prime minister. In his speech in Mumbai, he said he was convinced that the far-reaching government initiatives would succeed in solving India’s challenges, for example with regard to education and healthcare. “It will make our economy bigger and stronger.” If that’s the case, there’s room for improvement for Asia’s richest man.
More: India promises the cheapest green hydrogen in the world